Jonah Goldberg Says James Von Brunn Hated Neocons. Does That Mean…

In my latest commentary at Taki’s Magazine, I take to task liberal pundits who insist on drawing connections between the violent acts of abortion doctor murderer Scott Roeder and neo-Nazi James von Brunn with the broader conservative movement.

The headline in my local newspaper for Jonah Goldberg’s latest column read “Left leaves logic behind to blame extremist violence on the right,” in which the NRO editor takes a similar approach. But in using the Left’s logic against them, drawing his own outlandish connections between Brunn and “mainstream liberalism,” Goldberg offers a subtext or a secondary indictment against conservatives like those at TAC, or “other outposts of paranoid Bush hatred” who have “portrayed neoconservatives – usually code for conservative Jews and other supporters of Israel – as an alien, pernicious cabal.”

For Goldberg, there is no distinction between “mainstream liberalism” and traditional conservatives, who often have convergent views on certain subjects:

“if we are going to play this game where we take the words of politicians and pundits, compare them to the words of murderers and psychopaths, and then assign blame accordingly, then let’s blame The New York Times, Chris Matthews, left-wing blogs everywhere and the academics who penned The Israel Lobby (which blames a fifth column of Israel loyalists for our troubles).

‘(Neoconservatives) have penetrated the culture at nearly every level from the halls of academia to the halls of the Pentagon,’ observed The Times. ‘… They’ve accumulated the wherewithal financially (and) professionally to broadcast what they think over the airwaves to the masses or over cocktails to those at the highest levels of government.’

NBC’s Chris Matthews routinely used the word ‘neocon’ as if it was code for ‘traitor.’ He asked one guest whether White House neocons are ‘loyal to the Kristol neoconservative movement, or to the president?’ Von Brunn may have wondered the same thing, which is why he reportedly had the offices of Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard on his hit list.”

It seems for Goldberg, it is ridiculous that the Left would try to blame the actions of Brunn on mainstream right-wingers like himself. He’s right.

I’m just not so sure that it’s clear Jonah Goldberg believes that it’s just as ridiculous to try to blame James von Brunn on conservatives of the non-neocon, traditional, paleo or libertarian variety.